 Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen |
If Flash is the number one cause of crashes on the Mac platform, as Apple has asserted, it’s not Adobe’s fault, according to Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal said that such crashes have something, “to do with the Apple operating system.”
The comments from Mr. Narayen came on the heels of an open letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs that attacked Flash as a closed, proprietary solution that isn’t suitable for mobile devices.
“Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice,” Mr. Jobs wrote in his letter. “Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.”
Much of the interview addressed the charges in Mr. Jobs’s lengthy letter, And Mr. Narayen emphasized that the Flash platform benefits developers by allowing them to have one development tree for multiple platforms, and that consumers then benefitted by having maximum choice.
He also said denied Mr. Jobs’s claim that having Flash active on a mobile device drains battery life, calling the claim “patently false.” He called other technology charges leveled by Mr. Jobs “a smokescreen,” adding, “When you resort to licensing language [to restrict this sort of development, it has] nothing to do with technology.”
The rhetorical war of words (and licensing agreements) has been heating up for months, with Steve Jobs and other Apple execs attacking Flash for its shortcomings that’s not fit for mobile devices and Shantanu Narayen and Adobe employees defending the Flash platform as an open solution that offers flexibility to developers and great content to consumers.